Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial: Live Updates

Dean plays audio from a January 2 call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” in an attempt to overtake Joe Biden's lead in the state.

“Senators, we must not become numb to this. Trump did this across state after state — so often and so loudly and so publicly,” she stated.

Reports today emerged that Fulton County, Ga. prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s call to Raffensperger.

The meat and potatoes of the House impeachment managers' argument began today. Rep. Madeline Dean of Pennsylvania played video of the easily-forgotten public statement from Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer in the office of the Georgia Secretary of State, presciently warning that the president's insistence that the election was being stolen by a conspiracy of dishonest officials was going to lead to violence.

“Mr. President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia. We’re investigating. There’s always a possibility. I get it, and you have the rights to go through the courts. What you don’t have the ability to do, and you need to step up and say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right. It’s not right. And y’all, I don’t have anything scripted. Like I said, I’m going to do my best to keep it together. All of this is wrong.”

Sterling made the comment after one of President Trump's lawyers, Joe DiGenova, said in a Newsmax television interview, “that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”

As the trial resumes with Representative Madeleine Dean (D., Pa.) laying out the list of Trump election lawsuits that were “resoundingly rejected” by courts, Trump adviser Jason Miller appears on Fox News “about five minutes” after speaking with Trump, who is in a “great” mood.

Representative Joaquin Castro (D., Texas) makes the case that Trump convinced his supporters that the election was stolen.

“This attack did not come from one speech and it didn't happen by accident. The evidence shows clearly that this mob was provoked over many months by Donald J. Trump,” Castro argued. ” . . . He gave them specific instructions on how, where, and when to 'Stop the Steal.'”

Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Ca.) then goes through Trump's tweets and advertisements to show a “purposeful and deliberate” plan which culminated in the riot.

After an opening from Representative Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), Representative Joe Neguse lays out their case against Trump: “The Big Lie: The election was stolen,” followed by “Stop the steal,” and “Fight like hell to stop the steal.”

“It was part of a carefully planned months-long effort with a very specific instruction: Show up on Jan. 6, and get your people to fight the certification. He incited it, it was foreseeable,” Neguse states. He calls Trump's January 6 speech “a call to arms.”

“It was not rhetorical. Some of his followers had been primed for this over many months.”

The House impeachment managers now have 16 hours over Wednesday and Thursday to make their case against Trump, on the charge that he incited the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6.

According to multiple reports, they plan to show never-before-seen Capitol security footage to help make their case — following an opening montage shown Tuesday — to try to pin the blame of the infamous events squarely on Trump.

While a Tuesday-night report suggested that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) could still vote to convict Trump, despite voting against the trial's constitutionality, it is very unlikely 17 Republicans end up in that camp.

Welcome back to National Review's live coverage of former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, set to resume at noon.

President Trump was reportedly upset with the Tuesday performance of his defense team — particularly Bruce Castor, whose performance was cited by Senator Bill Cassidy (R., La.) as one of the reasons why he voted with five of his GOP colleagues and the Democrats to declare the trial as constitutional.

“The House managers were focused, they were organized . . . they made a compelling argument,” Cassidy said after the vote. “President Trump’s team, they were disorganized . . . One side is doing a great job and the other side is doing a terrible job . . . As an impartial juror, I’m going to vote for the side that did the good job.”

According to the New York Times, Trump “was an eight” on the angry scale. “President Trump was not happy with the performance of his legal team in action,” one source told Politico.

Castor defended himself in an interview with Fox News, saying that “my reaction is you need to check those sources because that has not been communicated to me by the president or anybody associated with the president.”

NR's Zach Evans has the writeup. The trial is set to continue at noon on Wednesday.

Here's more on Cassidy:

Six Republicans — Collins, Cassidy, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse, and Toomey — vote with Democrats to move the impeachment trial forwards, 56-44. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is the only GOP senator to vote differently than he did on the Rand Paul motion last month.